Apotheosis
by Jayne Foyer
Summary: He would save his people and pull her back from the grave, even at the cost of his own soul.


**Apotheosis  
**_Deification; the elevation of a person  
(as to the status of a god)._

* * *

He started out a man.

A tall man with broad shoulders and a smooth jaw. One with dark skin and darker hair, one with eyes unlike the others. The others had eyes like crimson flowers blooming in the springtime, and skin like dirty sand. The red of their irises stirs in the memory a vision of blood, the glorious lifegiver that fills the veins and gives power to the body. Their eyes were peaceful, gentle, strong.

He had eyes like ghosts.

She fell in love with those eyes because they were searching, always searching. He was unsatisfied and itching for more where the others were joyful in their entirety. She wanted deeply to be the thing that he had been searching for, but when she could not satiate his hunger she promised to always search with him, to always keep her eyes on the horizon, looking for more, for the knowledge he needed so desperately. When he wasn't looking, though, she would turn and look at him. He was all she ever wanted to see.

Now loving him was never like loving another, because when he held her there was always a space between them. In reality there was no such thing, but she wondered sometimes if she could ever leap that chasm, touch her lips to his without him wondering why. She had skin and she had eyes just likes the others, but she tried to change. She wanted to change, to have him, to love him.

He never found what he was looking for. When her life began to wane like the winter moon, panic gripped his heart and twisted it into a thousand tiny pieces. As she lay in her bed, beads of hot sweat trickling down her cheeks like tears, he held her hand and he prayed.

_God of Ishbal, save her. Please save her. Don't let her die. Ishbala, if You can hear me, then you will save her. You will perform a miracle. You will do the impossible and my praise to You will never end. I will praise Your glory. I will not search, not ever again. O Merciful God of Ishbal, let me love her. This is all I ask._

He held her hand as if became limp in his.

His prayers ended. No use. They hadn't worked.

A snake stirred in the pit of his stomach. His heart rebelled against his god. _You didn't do it. I begged of You. You couldn't save her._

The feeling spread from his stomach, to his limbs, and consumed his heart. His eyes finally woke from their sleep, and there was fire in them.

* * *

The dark room was a mess. He had emptied it entirely, except for a few books left open in the corner. He drew a circle. The chemical composition of a body was ready, sitting there, waiting to become something.

He pressed his hands together, preparing himself. He calmed his breathing. He would see her again, if it was his last act on this earth.

If he were younger and more naïve, he might had murmured a short prayer asking for forgiveness.

Instead he placed his hands upon the chalk of the circle.

* * *

When he at last regained consciousness, there was warmth all around him. It was dark, and the air was thick with something like steam. He felt numb, entirely numb. If this was death, he welcomed it.

A sharp pain below his waist. Blood rushed back to his brain, and the nerves all began to shriek at once. The warmth, that warmth was his own blood. _His own damn blood._

He heard a rasping noise.

Forcing himself to sit up, leaning heavily on his arms, into the darkness he asked, "…My love?"

Shallow breaths. His heart clenched in anticipation of seeing her. "My…"

The steam began to clear. Red eyes stared back at him. A leap of joy within him, and then

"My…_God._"

Its arm stretched towards him, bony and claw-like. It struggled for breath. "This isn't…" he whispered. "It isn't…" Fear jolted his body like a thunderbolt. "_Where is she?_" he screamed.

The thing just looked at him with soulless, glowing eyes. He closed his own eyes tightly, so he wouldn't have to look at it, but that didn't stop the tears from coming. His mind glazed over and he forced himself unsteadily onto his feet. _Leave it_, his mind told him. _You failed. Leave it._

A step backwards, away from the abomination he had created.

_This is what happens when you think you are a god._

Another step, leave it, leave it. He didn't want to look at it. He didn't want to see it ever again.

His poor brother, standing there in shock and in awe. His poor, dear little brother, the one who hated him and would hate him even more now that he knew what his older brother had done. Neither one of them could have her now. This comforted him more than he had been in a long time, and he despised himself for it.

* * *

Exile. The life he knew he would lead, the moment her life slipped away like water slips between the narrow slits between in the hands.

He researched and he learned. He would bring her back this time, without losing anything else, and they would be together always, and they would keep searching always. They would search together, as it was meant to be. He would love her because she held his arm while his eyes saw right through her.

Rumors fly quickly in cities and suddenly he is back in his homeland, standing in front of a crowd, explaining. They are bruised, bloodied, injured and desperate. They allow his return when he swears to Ishbala that he will bring them peace, ignoring the furious glances from his little brother who still is so much of a child, despite the years that have passed.

* * *

He finally reaches the horizon and he realizes there is nowhere else to turn to.

The ancients tried to kill their knowledge but it will always return.

A cruel irony twists tightly in his mind and he recalls the quiet piece of wisdom that mothers share with children in this time of fear.

_Our God will never let His people die._

The man looks at the circle on paper, then he looks at his hand, dark and splattered with ink.

_Ishbal,_ he thinks.

_Let me be your God._

* * *

The savior of our people, that is what people will call him.

He paints the circle onto himself, satisfied at last. He had finally abandoned his God, just as Ishbala did to him those years ago. He will end the bloodshed and then he will pull this nation from the ashes and then he will bring his love back from the grave with the lives of the dead as payment. A life for a life is equivalent exchange, the supreme law of the world. This war will give him as many lives as he needs. He will bring her back.

His scars are still tender, after so many years. The constant reminder of the rebellion that festers within every fiber of his being.

He hunches in the squalid house and says, "My god is myself and I shall free the people and I am the people."

He closes his eyes and he activates the circle.

* * *

He wonders sometimes with what little consciousness he has left whether or not becoming a god meant losing his mind. It must have. He saved his people. He saved his people but now his mind is broken and his brother's face is bleeding and his arm is gone. He doesn't have much time. He remembers how to use the forbidden science and he uses it, to stop the bleeding. The ink disappears from his skin. He lies there, turning sand into mud, until the other man crawls over to hear his older brother's dying words.

* * *

_You probably deserved her more._

_But I'm going to see her first._


End file.
